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| {{a|work|[[File:Squid Games RIF.png|450px|frameless|center]]}}{{d|Reduction in force|rɪˈdʌkʃən ɪn fɔːs|n|}} (Also “'''[[RIF]]'''”) | | {{a|hr|{{image|Squid Games RIF|png|}}}}{{d|Reduction in force|rɪˈdʌkʃən ɪn fɔːs|n|}} (Also “'''[[RIF]]'''”) |
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| The permanent removal of headcount — mass [[redundancy]] — usually targeted at that sweet spot in the organisation whose own reports aren’t so ''useless'' they can’t get by without meaningful supervision, and who aren’t so ''senior'' that they get to make decisions about who should be subject to a [[RIF]]. | | The permanent removal of headcount — mass [[redundancy]] — usually targeted at that sweet spot in the organisation whose own reports aren’t so ''useless'' they can’t get by without meaningful supervision, and who aren’t so ''senior'' that they get to make decisions about who should be subject to a [[RIF]]. |
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| Usually, therefore, it is a means of taking out a swathe of mid-ranking [[subject matter experts]]. We of the [[Morlock|guild of mid-ranking subject matter experts]] find this fact rather ''chafing'', to say the least. | | Usually, therefore, it is a means of taking out a swathe of mid-ranking [[subject matter experts]]. We of the [[Morlock|guild of mid-ranking subject matter experts]] find this fact rather ''chafing'', to say the least. |
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| ===Line management===
| | We have a view that an organisation which needs a periodic [[reduction in force]] is not properly managing its human resources month-by-month. |
| {{line management capsule}}
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| But we digress.
| | the JC has a view that [[system redundancy|systemic redundancy]] in a [[complex]] organisation is, at some level, quite a good thing; a [[reduction in force]] is an ''elimination'' of redundancy, and is therefore more fraught than it should be. Elimination of ''superfluous'' redundancy is one thing, but over what period should we measure superfluity? If [[Credit Suisse]] is any guide, it is [[Archegos|something like ''250 years'']]. |
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| The basic job of [[line manager|line management]] is to supervise direct reports. Employees all have things to do ''besides'' supervising their direct reports, though a given worker’s proportion of line management to other stuff depends on that employee’s seniority.
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| The peril of supervising depends an awful lot on ''who'' you are supervising: if it is a novice, you feel the same terror [[Grandma Contrarian]] did when teaching the young [[JC]] to drive: right leg braced and jammed in the floor-well where she wished a brake pedal would be; right hand loosely gripping the hand-brake and ready to yank; left hand feeling anxiously for the door-handle, ready to judo-roll to safety at any moment, while her cretinous lad bunny-hopped his way around an empty carpark.
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| With experienced staff, by contrast, line management is — well, ''should'' be — a ''dream''; like sitting back with a cocktail under full spinnaker as a well-drilled crew of professional yacht racers nimbly clamber about minutely trimming hydrofoils. Line management ''should'' become more like the latter and less like the former the more senior your team.
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| Thus, roles change the higher up the multi-level marketing scheme you go:
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| '''You get paid more''': The more senior you are, the more lolly you take home. This news should not rock anyone’s world. Nor should it that the ''rate of increase'' in lolly is not linear, but exponential, in an insane and impossible-to-rationalise kind of way.
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| '''There are fewer of you''': This stands to reason: there are lots of [[fungible]] Belarusian minions at the bottom taking home 30,000 rubles a year for carting around huge hunks of stone and occasionally getting squished — but hey, hose down the rock-face and get a new one, you know? — but only one [[Hank]], taking home twenty-five mill for the inconvenience of having to flit around the world in a corporate jet and moralise at Davos. Generally, the more units cost, the fewer you can justify, but the irresistibility of this logic runs into the immovability of fat birds who, having made it to the thin branches, find themselves disinclined to make way meaning that, over time the poor, old tree gets rather top-heavy. As a result, when you multiply take-home comp by rank title, it looks a bit like the snake who ate the elephant in ''Le Petit Prince''.
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| '''You spend more time managing other people''': We take this to be a trivial observation: the contractor at the call-centre in Belarus has no direct reports, so spends ''no'' time line-managing; [[Hank]] ultimately has every direct report, so spends almost ''all'' his time line-managing.
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| The gradations between are not inevitable — every firm has those grand, gnomic elders who float about sprinkling their ineffable magic on things without having any portfolio in particular or any direct reports — but, as a rule the further up the chain you go, the more time you spend ''managing other people''. Especially given fat-bird syndrome: the porky tweeters on the upper branches don’t really have anything else to do ''but'' manage their lines (and [[Dotted line|dotted-lines]]!)
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| '''The more homogenous you become''': A multinational corporation is basically a machine for systematically ''eliminating'' [[Diversity|cognitive diversity]]. This is how [[Evolution by natural selection|survival of the fittest]] works. What, after all, is “fitness” if it is not conforming oneself to the expecations of the [[Ouija politics|management ouija]]? Life as a corporate grunt is not for everyone: a large portion of the population self-selects by not applying for employement in the financial services sector from the get-go. Those who inadvertently fall into it — perhaps by misapprehension, inattention or cruel accident of fate — make it their business to exit via the first available gift shop and, we are given to understand, thereafter live fulfilled lives as actors, restaurateurs, HGV drivers and whatever else the ''hoi polloi'' get up to by way of making ends meet. Those aspiring bankers who stay on, and who grasp the survival techniques quickly enough to hang on — are already homogenous enough, and that is before they are rigorously chiseled, sanded, polished and buffed to a high sheen by the ebbs, flows and microclimates of their organisation. The longer you stay the smoother you become, and the more a functional part of the organisation ''as it currently is'': ''the firm'' domesticates ''you''. You grow ''fitter''; ever more perfectly adapted to the organisation’s ''prevailing'' ecosystem. Just as you don’t bite the hand that feeds, nor do you seek to ''change'' an environment which already lets you live your best life.
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| The graduate intake might have all kinds of pink-haired, wild-eyed loons on induction day: by the end of the year most of them will be gone. The class of senior administrators, by contrast, will be interchangeable; rendered thoroughly in the corporation’s image. You may have difficulty telling them apart.
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| '''The people you manage need less management''': It is equally trivial that the Belarusian contractor, fresh off the bus from the job-centre in Minsk, knows nothing but what he is told: his reliance upon his manager for practical guidance and the dispensation of wisdom and experience is total. By contrast, the forty-year industry veteran [[chief financial officer]], who narrowly missed out on the [[CEO]] job herself, knows exactly what is expected of her, what to do, how to react to any crisis and has little need of guidance and instruction from the jammy sod who ''did'' get the big job. Thus, note a shift in line management ''content'' as we ascend into the Gods: [[The battle of substance and form|''substance'' drops off, and ''form'' takes over]]. Line management becomes progressively more about the ''appearance'' of good governance than its delivery: more ''[[performative governance|performative]]''. Were the CEO to be accidentally run over by his Lear Jet, the organisation would not skip a beat. Take out a section of associate directors, on the other hand, and it will grind to a halt. The challenge, therefore is selecting the right portion of associate directors to excise so that you trim mainly fat and do not “cut into the muscle”. | |
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| '''The more say you get over redundancy rounds''': It should be no more flabbergasting to hear that those dodging rockfall at the base of the pyramid have ''zero'' influence on when, whether, how or by the removal of whose person the workforce should be rationalised, whereas those at the in the executive suite have total influence, if exercised through the medium of their immediate and indirect reports. Here, though, there is no straight-line extrapolation from 0 to 100 percent: A small cadre in the top three echelons are privy to these decisions, the vast majority of the rest of the workforce is not.
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| Right, now where am I going with all of this?
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| {{sa}} | | {{sa}} |
| | *[[System redundancy]] |
| | *[[Lateral quitter]] |
| | *[[Mediocrity drift]] |
| *[[Performative governance]] | | *[[Performative governance]] |
| *[[La Vittoria della Forma sulla Sostanza]] | | *[[La Vittoria della Forma sulla Sostanza]] |
| {{ref}} | | {{ref}} |
The instrument (the “telescreen”, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. Index: Click ᐅ to expand:
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Reduction in force
rɪˈdʌkʃən ɪn fɔːs (n.)
(Also “RIF”)
The permanent removal of headcount — mass redundancy — usually targeted at that sweet spot in the organisation whose own reports aren’t so useless they can’t get by without meaningful supervision, and who aren’t so senior that they get to make decisions about who should be subject to a RIF.
Usually, therefore, it is a means of taking out a swathe of mid-ranking subject matter experts. We of the guild of mid-ranking subject matter experts find this fact rather chafing, to say the least.
We have a view that an organisation which needs a periodic reduction in force is not properly managing its human resources month-by-month.
the JC has a view that systemic redundancy in a complex organisation is, at some level, quite a good thing; a reduction in force is an elimination of redundancy, and is therefore more fraught than it should be. Elimination of superfluous redundancy is one thing, but over what period should we measure superfluity? If Credit Suisse is any guide, it is something like 250 years.
See also
References
